Don’t Book an Outdoor Table at a Restaurant Until You Read This

With the sun making its brutal presence known and each day lasting slightly longer than the one before, we can finally say that summer has arrived. As sure as sunflowers will stretch toward their namesake, restaurant customers will flock to the patio to dine al fresco. Restaurant staff will do all within their power to tame the nature that surrounds patio diners, but customers would do well to remember that not all things can be controlled.

Weather will be weather whether you like it or not

The patio or deck may have umbrellas or cooling mists, but the temperature is controlled by none other than Mother Nature. I worked in a restaurant with outdoor dining for 10 years and I was always surprised when someone would step inside and ask what it’s like on the patio, as if it had its own microclimate. If it was hot when they came in from outside, chances are it’s identically hot on the patio. Complaining about it or rolling their eyes will not change anything.

The other question that always filled me with incredulity was when they’d ask me when it was going to stop raining. I knew the menu like the back of my hand, but I did not know the Old Farmer’s Almanac. Neither did I have a direct line of contact with the Weather Channel or the National Weather Service. What I did have was my phone with a weather app and they did too, so don’t rely on the restaurant staff to predict the weather for you when you want to sit outside. Use an app or watch the news because weather forecasters are trained professionals who keep their job even if they predict a sunny day but there’s a deluge instead.

There will be wind and there will be sun

Both of these can make or break your dining experience and both of them are — again — out of our control. A beam of sunlight reflecting onto a perfectly positioned knife and then directly into your eyes is a risk you take when dining on a deck. Your server can adjust an umbrella to keep you in the shade, but the planet has this habit of constantly moving around the sun, meaning the shade moves with it. As for wind, if it blows your napkin to the ground, just be glad the gust wasn’t strong enough to blow away your hamburger. Wind can be annoying, but it’s not like your Dorothy Gale being blown into a land of technicolor and brainless scarecrows.

If you choose to sit on the patio, brace yourself for the possibility of insects

You are in their world, they are not in yours. If a fly takes a dive-bomb into your Margarita, who’s to blame? Fish it out and move on. You can tell your server you’d like a new cocktail, but there’s no guarantee that it will happen. Restaurants can’t be responsible for every insect that lands on food when you’re sitting outside. Think of it as a cookout with ants. It happens and we deal with it.

Once you choose to sit outside, the die has been cast

If it’s too hot, too windy, too bright, or there are too many bugs, there’s not necessarily another table inside that you can immediately move. I once had a patio with several customers who sat there against my advice because of the potential for rain. When the skies opened up, they had no place to go because the tables inside the restaurant were all full. They went inside anyway and ate standing up until the rain moved on.

Make your choice wisely when deciding where to sit. And, if you do sit inside, be aware of the possibility of  the air conditioning being set somewhere between North Pole and tundra. The interior of restaurants tend to be warm places because of, you know, the kitchen, so thermostats are typically low. Cool air is a welcome reprieve in the summer for the people who work there, especially for the servers who are stationed on the patio and working in less than ideal temperatures. Bring a sweater.

Summer is here and eating outside can be a wonderful part of it. Just keep these things in mind so you can be sure to weather the experience with grace.